World Of Warcraft

It's been several years now since Blizzard Entertainment played an April Fool's prank on its World of Warcraft base by saying the fifth race in the game would be panda-humanoid in flavor - today we find that in their newest WoW expansion, it's no joke. There's a whole new expansion for World of Warcraft coming out soon by the name of "Mists of Pandaria." This race of fuzzy lovable killers has since the first "JK" announcement made several appearances in both WoW and StarCraft II, and both story characters and a playable Monk class will be coming with this next expansion pack.

Oh it's nearly holiday time, or whatever you wanna say, and Blizzard Entertainment is definitely attaching itself to the Christmas with three heartily fancy cards that you can send to your friends, enemies, and Facebook. There's one for World of Warcraft, there's one for Starcraft II, and there's one for - YES - Diablo III. You'll find plenty of Santa inside, guns and death as well, and one gigantic barbarian that seems more intent on murdering you than giving you a positive present.

So you're on the fence on deciding weather you'd like to upgrade your World of Warcraft to the Cataclysm with the giant dragon and the fire and the crazy wild awesomeness? Perhaps you'd like to give it a whirl for about 10 days while you think about if you'd like to have it forever? Now you can do just that. Today Battle.net and Blizzard give you a completely free 10 day trial period (similar to some other older games they've still got lying around) during which you can play the game in its fullness. After that, probably you'll be so WoWed that you'll need to Cataclysm your WoW to stay WoWed enough to WoW forever.

Those waiting at ground zero, Fry’s Electronics in Fountain Valley, found themselves in a rain drenched nightmare yesterday after waiting upwards of 82 hours in line. Who was the first person in line? 18 year old Curtis McHenry, a dude so dedicated to getting that first spot that he lined up at 2PM Friday for the Monday release. Wild! These crazed maniacs weren't all disappointed, however, as they did indeed receive not only their copy of the game on time, but a signed Collectors edition - free! Signed by who, you ask? Why, Frank Pearce, co-founder of the Irvine-based game company Blizzard Entertainment and executive producer of World of Warcraft!

Feel free to submit your life back to the everlasting addiction of Warcraft in a brand spanking new expansion by the name of Cataclysm, right now, available today. You can choose to venture your way out of your cave and get a physical copy of the game at your local fun store or stay low in your seat, downloading and upgrading directly through Blizzard. Inside this expansion you'll find new zones, hundreds of new quests, unique dungeons, an increased level cap of 85 (WHO WILL BE FIRST?) and two completely new races - worgen and goblin (I'm surprised it took this long for them to give up a goblin!) A new age has begun!

Oh man. Yesterday we learned about a new form of life, but Julian Assange of WikiLeaks wasn't satisfied. He wanted ALIENS. So what's he do today? He announces the next WikiLeaks cable to have UFOs in it. Wowie! Then we find out there's going to be some World of Warcraft on Android devices via GameString, a Professor in NYC installs a camera in the back of his head, and we review the super cute funny little device the Sony Ericsson LiveView - kawaii! Finally, Google pays someone $1 compensation in a Street View privacy case. Cash! All this and a whole lot more on SlashGear Morning Wrap-Up!

Festivities at this chain-wide super nerd party will begin at 10PM and end after Warcraft: Cataclysm goes on sale at midnight (at which point everyone will calmly exit the building, run at full speed back to their houses and apartments, and promptly play for a week straight.) At the party before midnight, however, people just chilling out will be able to enjoy 30% off basically everything in the used category: CDs, books, video games, and movies.

The iPad is already a good gaming platform with the wealth of apps for the iPad and the iPhone that are available. The most popular video game in the MMORPG genre is World of Warcraft. WoW may have been around for awhile, but it still is hugely popular.

Over at Cologne, Germany, Gamescom is going strong, and companies like Razer are not letting the time slip by without some kind of announcement. In the case of Razer, they had a doozie lined up for this conference: a 17-key mouse, that looks like some kind of futuristic toy, which is called the Naga. It's set to be used for Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games, but as you can probably already assume, it's tailored for the largest of them all, World of Warcraft.